A Place that is Not, Emotionally
By FORREST ZENG ’26
Courtesy of Katelyn Cui
Student 2: Mashed potatoes and rice — carbohydrates, for sure, but not balanced in the slightest.
Student 1: Don’t offer comments on my food. Look at your own plate.
At this moment, another student came up to them from where they were sitting.
Student 3: Hello, sorry to interrupt. Nice to meet you.
Student 1: How do you do? It seems like you are carrying your plate, with some intent to find some open table that would bring you salvation among the ocean of students. I would hope your interruption of our meal is justified.
Student 3: Well, I was listening to the discussion you were describing in the line, and I had a flash memory of a time Forrest told me of another discussion he had. It was extremely interesting, to say the least; I think you all ought to hear it.
Student 2: You have made your case. Sit down and tell us.
Student 3 began to tell his story.
I woke up late on a Sunday morning. I walked to Elm and ate breakfast. There, I saw Forrest idly sitting at one of the taller tables, scratching his head. I walked up to him and sat down. We exchanged some small talk, before I asked, “Well, Forrest, what did you do yesterday?”
His eyes opened wide and his mouth twitched a bit. “Well, I had an enlightening conversation.” I pushed him for more details, and his response was a bit like this:
Forrest returned to Cilley and entered a dark vestibule on the first floor, facing two doors. The door on his right was his destination. He put his hand on the door handle and shook — the traditional Cillian method of making your presence known.
From behind the door, he heard Jinmin shout, “Intrā!”
Forrest opened the door and found himself face to face with Jinmin, already sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room, and another chair facing opposite of it.
“Look who it is. My favorite cynic. And where is Andrew?” Forrest said.
“He was wandering outside. Let him be.”
“…Systems where every facet of power and every facet of life as a subordinate or as a ruler is perfectly adherent to some set of rules.”
And so they sat down. Jinmin looked at Forrest and said, “Forrest, you and I are philosophers. We are lovers of knowledge. That is where the word ‘philosophy’ comes from.” Forrest concurred.
Jinmin continued, “Oftentimes, as philosophers, we create theoretical systems with certain definitions and rigid rules that are essentially ‘perfect’ in our opinions to achieve some ends.” Forrest concurred.
“Forrest, you study political philosophy. What can you tell me about theoretically perfect, political systems? That is, systems where every facet of power and every facet of life as a subordinate or as a ruler is perfectly adherent to some set of rules.”
He thought about it for a few moments, and then told Jinmin, “You describe utopia.”
Jinmin asked, “What is that?”
“The word utopia was coined by English philosopher Thomas More. He took the word from two Greek words, ‘ou’ and ‘topos,’ meaning ‘no place,’ respectively. In other words, More says
“In other words, More says that a perfect place is not a place.”
that a perfect place is not a place.”
“I see why he would name it this.”
“What do you mean?”
Jinmin shifted in his chair and continued, “You see, when we architect perfect political systems based on reason, we believe that these systems would simply be impossible to achieve in any way. But why is that? Is it because of a physical or a mental hindrance?”
Forrest said, “Well, shifting political systems would surely cause some physical logistics, but it cannot start without a change in philosophy, or in other words, a change in general mentality.”
“When Plato proposed in The Republic his utopian society, a hierarchical state where all the children are told a specific story about their specific role in life and are made to be satisfied with it, he did not even begin to believe that the society would be implemented,” Jinmin added. “Why? Because, in spite of the perfect reason and the perfect outcome that Plato designs with his system, we still find some of it ‘immoral.’ What do you make of that?”
Forrest said, “Well, surely for the members themselves of that utopia, they would not find any of it unethical. This is because they have lived in it from birth, and that is their existence. Meanwhile, we might label this a ‘dystopia,’ meaning a ‘bad place.’ We shy away from a ‘dystopia’ because its expectations of what our morals should be are different from our expectations. Our morals are based on our own environment from the moment we are born, and thus we base our expectations of society and our judgments of utopia on the facets of our own society. In turn, ethics, which is a general, interpersonal system of determining what is right or wrong, will also come from the environment in which this system of ethics develops.”
“Surely our morals and ethics are found through some kind of reason?” “In a way, yes. They are based on certain axioms that are derived from our environment. But this rational morality comes to an emotional limit for most humans — we think it strange and ‘dystopian’ when Aldous Huxley describes in Brave New World a society where embryos are injected with special materials to hinder or advance their development, even though these biological ends create a perfect world, where every person is satisfied and healthy.”
“And so most humans don’t want to strive towards these societies because they are emotionally repulsed?”
“Precisely. Utopia is a place that is not, emotionally.”
“Precisely. Utopia is a place that is not, emotionally.”
At this moment, there was a commotion outside the vestibule, and the door suddenly burst open. In walked Andrew. “Gentlemen, I have homework to do. I will banish you.”
Before Andrew could pull Forrest out of his chair and throw him violently into the hallway, Jinmin stood and implored Andrew to join their discussion. Forrest and Jinmin both knew that Andrew could not resist. Andrew feinted reluctance and accepted.
Forrest said to Andrew, “We were talking about utopia. Jinmin and I agree that utopia is a place that does not exist, because we, as humans, are emotionally repulsed based on our own relativist morality.”
Andrew put his hand to his mouth and thought. After a few seconds, he said, “That is interesting. But then tell me this: if I were a caveman who did not understand agriculture, money, science, or government, then saw what the world was today, wouldn’t I judge this to be some kind of utopia?”
“But surely there is a difference — we would have different resources, in addition to having differences in time. Doesn’t this imply that it would not be fair to contrast these circumstances?” Forrest asked.
“You are right. It would not be fair to consider the circumstances we live in to be the same as that of a caveman. But these circumstances are in fact created by some philosophical system that a caveman would consider utopian. In the end, we have created a rigorous government that has found a perfect method of getting food called ‘agriculture,’ among other things. Our total resources would still be the same as a caveman, but we would have access to so much more of it because of the way this utopia is structured.”
“Well then, surely a caveman would be happy to live in our society, then?”
“Not quite, I believe. Just as we are repulsed by Huxley’s utopia which we discussed earlier, a caveman might feel the same. As a caveman, I would not understand what ‘property’ is and would find it morally and emotionally repulsive. I would also find the same in agriculture — spending hours every day doing physically unattractive work, when I could be spending my hours exploring the hills, rivers, and forests in my area that are already quite ripe with resources.”
“It seems so.”
Having reached this point, Jinmin added, “This reminds me of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory. He believed that to understand a culture fully, you needed not only those inside the society to relate their experiences but also some outsiders to question it. In this way, one would be able to understand those facets of a society which would not be apparent to those within it, purely because one does not take an insider’s description for granted. But knowing this, if we are all essentially the same species as the cavemen who lived a hundred thousand years ago, how did we find ourselves in the place we are now? I mean, it seems, our normalcy is the caveman’s dystopia, even though we are the same species. How did we transform like this?”
Forrest thought, then said, “You said it yourself: hundreds of thousands of years of gradual change. The system of philosophy that humanity lived in changed ever so slightly every time a person was born. And every time a human was born, their beliefs would become the beliefs of their environment. Sure, there would be different systems of thought, but inevitably, systems would be destroyed or consumed as more popular or physically ‘beneficial’ systems became dominant.”
Jinmin asked, “Let us play the role of a ruler, then. I would like to transform my country, which is full of cavemen that don’t understand my utopian model, as efficiently as I can. If we assume that I have already thought through the needed actions to establish this system,
“We would persuade our subjects not by detailing every logical step, for we know that reason is barely congruent with human emotion.”
how would I overcome this ‘obstacle’ of emotion?”
“The same way that we speak.”
Jinmin paused for a moment. “What do you mean?”
Forrest elaborated. “Admit it, as philosophers, we have become masters of rhetoric. To explain our concepts to others requires a good presentation that expresses composure and makes our words appealing. As a rational philosopher-king, we want to persuade our population that our system of reason, our utopia, would be beneficial for all of them, and make their future generations healthy and satisfied. We would persuade our subjects not by detailing every logical step, for we know that reason is barely congruent with human emotion.
In that case, we must use rhetoric. We must use sophistry, art, and perhaps even religion. These things cater to the emotions of our subjects. In this way, we can increase the rate at which our philosophical evolution moves which, without any significant rhetoric, would have taken place over thousands of years. How rousing it must have been to see the animated speeches of the revolutionary generation of the United States, preaching a utopia of republicanism, and having this utopia, at least its structure, come relatively quickly.”
“I see now.”
Andrew summarized, “Utopia could exist in the future thousands of years ahead of us, simply because, as humans, we are psychologically absorbent of the general thought of humanity, of the geist, as George Hegel put it. And that we are living in a utopia relative to those thousands of years before us because we grew up in a stream of consciousness directed by the systems of the times we live in. We simply do not realize it, because of the incremental, small changes in the systems. These changes are either small so that the inherent psychology of our minds adjusts without help, or they are big changes, but accompanied with some kind of art, or presentation that makes us feel attached to a new system of ideas.”
And this is where Forrest ended his recollection, for he had to go to a meeting.
Student 2: Are we really living in a utopia? It all seems quite normal to me.
Student 1: You heard the discussion; we know what it is now.